“Well, we aren’t very near it yet,” Case replied.
“But we will be nearer it, physically, to-morrow night at this time,” Alex kept on. “Think of it! Through the drainage canal like an arrow in this good little motor boat, down the Mississippi with a rush, into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea and out again, and then along the coast to the mouth of the Amazon! Say, boys, do you know that the Amazon has a mouth a hundred and fifty miles wide?”
“What a campaign orator she would have made!” laughed Clay. “But, suppose we find the money before we look over the map.”
The motor boat _Rambler_ lay in a secluded warehouse slip in the South Branch, as the southwestern arm of the Chicago river is called, and the three hungry boys referred to and one other, Julian Shafer, the lad the others were now anxious about, constituted her crew and passenger list, all in one. Clay, Alex and Case were busy with supper arrangements, as stated, and all were listening for the approach of Jule.
The cabin, which was seven feet by nine, did not seem quite like home without him. The rain, which had come on with the going down of the sun, drove in spiteful gusts from the southwest, so that the two foot-square windows on that side were closed, but from the open casements to the north the odor of sizzling sausage and bubbling coffee traveled out on the wet winds of the April evening.
Many who passed the head of the driveway which led down to the warehouse and the pier where the _Rambler_ lay stopped to sniff the fragrant reminder of what the world owes to its stomach, and to look in wonder at the odd little residence on the brown river.
A patrolman, rustling along in a rubber coat which came down to his great heels, swinging his nightstick petulantly, as if in protest of the storm, drew up at the entrance to the private way and glanced down at the boat and stood for an instant imagining how a good cup of that coffee would taste!
It was while he stood there that the door was opened, and it was while the light from the interior lay over the pier and warehouse that the officer thought he saw a slim figure skulking in an angle of the building. When he reached the place where the figure had stood, the light was gone and the angle was empty, with the rain beating against it in a particularly determined manner. So the policeman went on about his business.